Were you at Cedarburg Strawberry Festival or Lakefront Festival of Art this weekend? Did you take any photos at the Summer Soulstice Music Festival? Email your photos from any festivals, fairs or other community celebrations to festivals@jsnewsroom.com to be featured in our reader photo gallery.

No Man’s Land: Fiction From a World at War — 1914-1918. Edited by Pete Ayrton. Pegasus. 572 pages. $15.95.

One hundred years ago this week, British and French forces defeated the German army during World War I in the Battle of the Marne. More than 2 million soldiers fought — and, some estimate, about 500,000 were killed or wounded — in the battle, which set the tone for four years of carnage before the war ended in 1918.

Much of the fiction written during and after World War I centered on that carnage and its cost, physically, morally, politically. But for the most part, the voices we've heard have been English, or its American variant, with occasional French and German accents thrown in. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

The Ebola epidemic certainly adds resonance to Emily St. John Mandel's introduction of a game-changing plague in "Station Eleven," her haunting and riveting new novel:

"Of all of them there at the bar that night," Mandel writes, "the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city." | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. By Eimear McBride. Coffee House Press. 227 pages. $24.

When your fate seems set in stone at the age of 2, in fact perhaps before you were even born, what chance do you have? This is just one of the many questions posed in Eimear McBride's stylistic, gut-wrenching debut novel, "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing."

Set in Ireland, McBride tells the story of a young woman's life and her relationship with her brother, who as a young child contracts a brain tumor. Even though the tumor is treated, it is the beginning of the painful downward spiral of her family. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

My determined decision as to dumbest and dorkiest description of a drama during the decade? Doug Jarecki and Jason Powell's "Destiny, Deviltry & Dentistry," unfolding on a lightly dressed Alchemist Theatre stage, dominated by three D's dwarfing the downstage actors, who are directed by Katie Cummings.

The deliciously daft title is deliberate, as Jarecki and Powell make clear when introducing the seven comic sketches to come, describing them as plot-deficient and devoid of developed characters. Accompanied by Powell's guitar, the duo sing a song demanding we "surrender to the idiocy" awaiting us. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

The Traveling Beer Garden, part of Milwaukee County Parks, Recreation and Culture, is expecting its 50,000th customer today.

The special patron will get more than ordered. The Traveling Beer Garden siren will sound and he or she will receive a gift basket of Sprecher and Milwaukee County Parks products and certificates. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

Wednesday's "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" was taped before the Green Bay Packers' humiliating loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

But the comic bit the host did in honor of the start of the NFL season stings just a little more on the day after the big loss. Fallon showed photos of the players from both teams and applied cutlines to them as if they were in a high school yearbook. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Blog Post

The Best of Brew City is your mobile guide to going out in Milwaukee. Locate events, live music, bars and restaurants near you and in Milwaukee's most popular neighborhoods. Visit bestofbrewcity.com and download the app for iOS or Android today.

The Traveling Beer Garden makes its final stand this weekend — unless its stay gets extended again (thanks, late-breaking summer!) — at Picnic Area No. 1 in Root River Parkway South, near S. 92nd St. and W. College Ave. in Greendale. The beer garden is open from 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article

A server sets a sturdy plate at the center of the table. On it rests a thick slab of lamb leg from Goodkind's rotisserie, juicy and browned and just rosy inside, nestled with potatoes, carrots and kale that roasted in the drippings.

The scents of lamb and the lavender it's seasoned with, a perfect pairing, rise from the table. With this plate looking like something from a Provençal family's Sunday dinner, the moment suddenly feels like more of a celebration than just a meal. | Sept. 5, 2014»Read Full Article